Before I ate your heart
I held it to my ear.
There was a chair dragging across a kitchen.
Rain ticking in a bucket.
Someone coming home
you couldn’t bear to stop waiting for.
You thought I wanted only the red.
I wanted the room you went quiet in.
The bite mark inside your cheek
where you kept an answer
until it tasted like metal.
So I pinned up my hair.
Spread the linen across my knees.
The women before me had embroidered it
with flowers so small
you could almost miss
how many times they’d pierced it.
I knew how to be careful.
I’d been taught to carry a full cup
through a room of angry people
without watching my hands.
Your heart moved against my mouth.
For a moment
I could have put it down.
Asked about your day.
Let us both survive
another immaculate evening.
Instead, I bit
and found the fucking grief.
Tough at the root.
Still fastened to a name.
I had to brace my feet beneath the table.
Had to pull.
My beautiful posture ruined,
one hand gripping the linen
until the little flowers split.
You made a sound
I felt inside my own teeth.
I had imagined hunger
would make this simple.
But there you were
in my mouth,
still loving what had hurt you.
I swallowed.
Then sat with you
while it hurt in me.